Billy Connolly's Route 66: The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip by Billy Connolly

Author:Billy Connolly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780748129959
Publisher: Hachette Digital
Published: 2011-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Oklahoma City Looks Oh So Pretty

A sign by the side of the road, then a slight thud under the wheels as one section of tarmac ended and another began. Those were the only indications that I’d slipped out of Kansas. ‘You Are Now Entering Oklahoma On Historic Route 66’, said the sign.

In many ways, Oklahoma is the heart and soul of Route 66. Although Springfield was the birthplace of the road’s moniker, Oklahoma was the home state of Cyrus Avery, the man who chose that name. And it boasts more miles of original Route 66 than any other state. Somewhat ironically, it was also the first state to bypass the Mother Road, dealing an early death blow in 1953 when it opened the Turner Turnpike (later part of the oppressive Interstate 44), which replaced more than a hundred miles of America’s Main Street. Oklahoma is also the state from which the characters fled in The Grapes of Wrath, in which John Steinbeck coined ‘The Mother Road’ to describe Route 66, immortalising it as ‘the path of a people in flight’ from dust bowl despair and starvation. It was also the first state to rec og nise Route 66’s historical and social significance. Enthusiasts established the Oklahoma Route 66 Association to preserve and promote the road, and they designed the ‘Historic Route 66’ signs that now punctuate the landscape all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles, having been adopted by most other states.

Route 66’s first miles in Oklahoma pass through fairly nondescript towns and villages. First there’s Quapaw, another former mining town, followed by Commerce, now semi-deserted, then Miami, from which a magnificent section of original 1926–37 Route 66 – bumpy, gravelly and only nine feet wide – stretches for two miles. A little while earlier, having passed through a wee ghost town, I’d spotted a handwritten sign by the side of the road: ‘Swamp Sale’, it said. Let’s have a look, I thought. You never know your luck. I’m one of those guys who sees a sign for a car-boot sale and thinks he’s bound to find a great guitar for twenty bucks. Maybe watching all those auction shows on television has done it. Whatever the reason, I was curious, so I pulled over and went for a wander.

Near the entrance, dressed in dungarees and lounging on a plastic garden chair, was a character straight out of The Grapes of Wrath. Shading himself from the sun under the raised rear door of a people carrier and some low trees, Vernon Willoughby looked kind of poor, but happy. A well-worn blue vest barely held in an impressive belly, and a greying beard framed his ruddy face. Around him, his family lazed in the sun, waiting for someone to take a look at their wares.

‘Are you selling those chickens and all?’ I pointed at some birds in a cage.

‘Yeah.’ Vernon had a twangy Oklahoma accent.

‘How much does a chicken cost?’

‘A lot of people sell ’em for fifteen dollars a piece when they’re grown, laying eggs.

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